Smart and resourceful will probably do, no need to be useful. I support this brainstorming session.
I appreciate the genius of a good con, ruse or business plan. As I've gotten older I've increasingly thought -- people are willing to fuck me over, I either need to fight their ability to do that or in turn fuck someone else over. You can either work hard, invest, sacrifice... or you can swindle.
At this point, I have nothing against swindling stupid people. I'm swindled myself, we're all getting swindled by someone -- our employers and the taxman for a start. When I think of the hours I spend in servitude to a bunch of fucking crooks (more waking hours annually than I spend on leisure, with family or resting at home), it makes me contemplate becoming a crook myself. Be that either by rising through the ranks at work and swindling those below me or coming up with some
other way of exploiting people for money. It seems like you do that or just accept your lot in life.
So I've often thought of selling drugs. Cannabis mainly... heroin and coke ruin too many lives so I wouldn't do that. But I see dudes much younger than me doing A-ok and being generally happier than me as a result of selling drugs. Unfortunately its one of those risks that could ruin your life (ie. a major run in with the law).
I've also thought of getting into porn. Not in the getting my ass reamed for money way though. The two biggest phenomenons on the internet are porn and social networks. Social networks apparently overtook porn usage recently... both of those things are catered to by pretty big providers, and theres no doubt gonna be a gold rush to combine the two (as some sites already have) but I can't help think sometimes that there may be a good idea waiting to happen relating to this... or maybe the next big thing will be something else. Sometimes people don't know what they want until you show them.. Gambling could also be a pretty big game to get into. Again, its catered to by hundreds, thousands of providers, but I think there are probably some game and service ideas that still havent been implimented. Sites that facilitate illegal downloading must be good money makers if you can find a good price for a premium service. And then of course there's always good old seizing on popular memes and cultural discourse to drive traffic and clicks on ad accounts... its common to see a domain registered within minutes of something being news, and exploited in that way.
Another potentially lucrative web scam is registering users on sites, and spamming the shit out of them, or selling their details so others can spam the shit out of them... people are doing that to other people, and always will -- why not get involved? Some of those phishing scams only exploit the terminally stupid.. again, if the risks weren't so big, I'd probably show an interest in that too.
On the flipside, I think it'd be a worthy cause to help fight some of these things. I loathe unfairness and inequity, they're my only motivation to think some of the miserable, exploitative thoughts above... I sometimes think of getting involved in politics or other work that would help fight that inequity.
If anyone would like to just send me money, that'd be cool. Give me a dollar a word for this post
